Free OSINT course and resources: How you can get started in 2024

well open source intelligence is now kind of woven into the fabric of so many different careers uh you may work in cyber you may work in investigative journalism or police work or any number of careers where you need to find information online efficiently one of the things that we find is unless you're going into the dark into the tour dark web to to do things to research the the hidden uh services that are in there the general thing that I will say is don't use it as a v PN because um it's not as safe and as secure and introduces a huge amount of latency into your work yes so um obviously I love open source intelligence and I have collected a library of links and websites and just volumous amounts of of information and along the way I started to organize it and I was using the start me page to kind of categorize the places that I like to go and learn so I have sections in here for things like news and blogs podcasts webcasts newsletters it's not that hard anymore and with a advances in Ai and other things having skills in ENT is just it's a force multiplier in any field you're in data data data there's data all around us but are you curious about diving into the world of data but don't know where to start like what do we do with all of this data well Brilliance data analysis path is your perfect starting point from the very Foundation of data to the intricacies of neural networks this path guides you through each critical step think of it as your personal road map into the data Universe the best part it's designed for everyone including you doesn't matter whether you're a beginner or looking to brush up your skills brilliant makes complex topics like probability and statistics surprisingly easy and fun to learn it's not just about the theory and this is what I love about brilliant you get real hands-on experience you'll be playing with data sets experimenting with Randomness and dabbling in neural networks before you know it and don't worry about feeling overwhelmed brilliant takes you on a gentle Journey from the very Basics to more advanced concepts each step is a low pressure high engagement learning experience it's not like just watching a video you actually actively involved in your learning it's recommended for not only being accessible but also very engaging brilliant is opening the doors to stem fields in such a friendly and approachable way so are you ready to embark on this exciting journey start your data Adventure today with brilliant use my link below go to brilliant.org David bomble and what's fantastic is the first 200 people that sign up get a special discount so that you can start your journey into Data analysis I really want to thank brilliant for their amazing partnership and for sponsoring this video I believe that you can change your life through education and brilliant are empowering many many people around the world to do just that education can change your life so start your journey today everyone it's David Bumble back with two very special guests Micah Griffin welcome thanks for having us here so for everyone who hasn't seen our previous videos Mike and I have done a bunch of videos together I've put links below been a long time mik so it's great to have you back I think it was about a year ago that we last spoke Griffin great to have you on the show big question for 2024 right is end I've heard this term um people the example I often see online on Tik Tok or whatever is people saying and Mikey warned about this before don't put photographs of your kids online because people with your kind of skills can find people really really easily so perhaps you can tell us what osen is very quickly but then hopefully give us a path perhaps paid perhaps free different options for different people you know to get to your level I mean how do I get from like knowing very little to becoming hopefully sort of like you guys B why don't you go ahead and start with the uh what is osen sure well open source intelligence is now kind of woven into the fabric of so many different careers uh you may work in cyber you may work in investigative journalism or police work or any number of careers where you need to find information online efficiently um to help support some kind of a question that you're going to answer or you know other information that you need to find so uh the world of Open Source intelligence is extremely broad um and all of us that are uh you know kind of immersed in it and and considered to be you know having some of expertise in the field we're you know maybe very knowledgeable about a section of that and then also um knowledgeable enough in other parts of it to go and find the resources and the people to um to to learn those other skills so Micah and I get asked all the time how do I get into osen exactly and it's such a broad question right but it really depends on the person so um Micah why don't you tell them how we broken that down yeah so you know the field of Open Source intelligence went from a pretty narrow field of you're doing open source intelligence or ENT in in support of military objectives or or for you know maybe for private investigators a little bit and then the internet came by and now so much data is online it's it's absolutely incredible what you can find and so like you said David you know we have taken some of your your vacation photos and located where you were it's not that hard anymore and with a advances in Ai and other things having skills in ENT is just a it's a force multiplier in any field you're in so to what Griffin said you know what we did is we figured out a little while ago that the way to uh do the the best type of learning about what is ENT is to take a course and really you can take the course or you can do self- learning and that's kind of like one of those paths that you you can choose and you don't have to stick to one of them but you do need to pick one of them do you have funds uh do you want to get that that cultivated data really really quickly about the skills that you need the tools that you need the best resources if so of course is the way to go Griffin and I actually have a course called introduction to ENT which is a free course that we've created with these people in mind like how do you go from from I don't know anything I heard the turn on some TV show to Ah that's what ENT is so I mean that's that's fantastic M and I really appreciate you guys sharing with the community so this is on your your company website right and a free course that I can take absolutely this is a free two-hour course uh that Griffin and I created with the the perfectly new person coming into the ENT world coming in my uh coming into it's on my ent. trining and you can go to the introduction to osen course which will be in the link uh in the notes um and you just sign up for it and and take the course it's a series of videos there's some Hands-On work that you can do we talk about security and operational security make sure sure that you stay a little bit safer uh in your work and we give you a ton of resources as well I'm glad you mentioned that because I think a lot of people who watch my channel are interested in cyber and I mean obviously M You' come from a cyber background so I mean when you want to like attack a company like on a pent test or something you need to do ENT but you know you could do the offensive ENT like that or you could do like you need to be aware of what you guys can get up to because if you want to hide your tracks then you know from a privacy point of you you want to perhaps not share too much data and Mike you some crazy videos where you I think the famous one I remember is the beer drinking thing where you find out about someone just based on what they were drinking which is insane but Griffin you do a lot of good work so perhaps you can tell us a bit about the stuff you're involved in because it's law enforcement uses a lot and you do a good cause with like finding missing people is that right yeah absolutely so my background is in the investigative side of Open Source intelligence so uh I spent 20 years in the private sector as a corporate investigator uh handling organized crime uh loved my job it was amazing and then one day I met up with some folks in law enforcement who were working together to find missing exploited and traffic children and I realized that the skills that I had developed in open source intelligence could be immediately transferred to the work that they were doing and I became part of an organization called the national Child Protection task force I'm now their Chief investigations officer and I work there full-time and uh I go between training law enforcement and supporting law enforcement's investigative efforts into finding missing children uh victims of exploitation suspects involved in those cases and my specialty and my day uh day in and day out work is all open source intelligence information that can be found online so Griffin I mean that's great to hear about jobs because you know people are interested in this but you know there's you you can do it for fun um play games or whatever but for a lot of people it's it's there's they want to make money out of this so I'm assuming there's a lot that there are a lot of opportunities or jobs in ENT yeah there really are uh and there's a lot of jobs that use ENT and maybe they don't call it that um and there are some some now specifically um consider that to be a discipline or a subsection of their work you know in my work with uh with people that investigate criminal activity you've got crime analysts you've got investigators federal agents um different tangental officers that need to find information online and all of those folks are kind of aware of Open Source intelligence to a level uh and some of them have received training on it and and the industry I guess in terms of enforcement as a whole have kind of embraced the fact that uh open source intelligence is a really critical part of criminal investigative work um but in terms of jobs on the broader landscape there are so many different careers that use uh ENT as a skill I think about all the investigative journalists that I talk to um folks that are doing sourcing and recruiting right finding that great talent for a company that's open source intelligence work right there and a lot of times people don't think of it that way because maybe they don't call it the same thing well I was just going to say that that Griffin mentioned in ENT and and we literally have uh free content on YouTube that is a Channel full of people that use ENT in their work whether it's cyber or whether it's law enforcement or whether it's private sector um you can hear it from people like what how do they use open source intelligence in their work in these uh in these free videos I love that I see I see some people I've interviewed before I see Philip wy's there offensive security that's great to see and then I see Justin also offensive security you've got lazette there she's in the police in the Netherlands right um lot that that's great to see because I think it I see it a lot with terms right people sometimes like Google dogs is a term or osen is a term and it's it kind of excludes a lot of people who just perhaps do this without even giving it a name yeah when I was uh when I was doing cyber security and and getting into osen I started talking to some uh some Sorcerers some recruiters that Griffin was just mentioning and and when I talked to him I'm like how do you find people online cu I mean recruiters that's their job you know I have a job wreck I need to find them and it was really kind of funny that the recruiter looked left and looked right kind of did that that that scene from The Incredibles and they said okay I can tell you this but you can't share this I'm like all right all right and they said I use Boolean queries I'm like what's a Boolean query she said okay you go to uh Google and you type in penetration tester or cyber security engineer it's like those are Google tors we've been doing those since the 2000s and she's said no no no bullying queries so that's when I realized that we need like some kind of data dictionary to map out you know this in one field is ENT and this in another field is ENT that's fantastic I mean one thing I was just you've got you've got a course about this as well I think is on the dark web right because there a lot of oen can be done on the dark web especially I mean the kind of stuff Griffin preps that you get up to yeah so the the dark web is one of those things that most people uh maybe they know about but they would never go there they don't know what it's for how they would use it um the dark web course that we have up right now is the first one of uh of what will be a series of getting people progressively more comfortable with understanding the dark web um and it's really that introduction it's that what is it how does it work how do I how do I kind of put my toe in the water safely uh because there is definitely some Peril in the dark web right there's some danger there and we want we want people to be conscious of of the dangers of doing any kind of online research we spend a lot of time talking about uh your operational security when you do this type of work uh you know in my work specifically there's uh there's a chance that you can compromise an investigation or you can alert somebody to the fact that they're being looked at and all of those things are very detrimental um in this case and and so you know we want people to to keep those RIS top of mind so I've been I've been asking you guys a bunch of questions but I believe you've um you've got something prepared right to give us like a path or road map how do I get to be where you guys are or hopefully you know try and get as close to your knowledge as I can I mean just just you mentioned offline how many years have you been doing this I think both of you like quite a long time right Griffin you you've got over 20 yeah I'm I'm just over 20 years now and I've been doing cyber security and and ENT for probably over 20 as well so you guys are going to give us like I hate to use the term not the shortcut but like this is the thing about learning at the feet of mentors if you like or learning from people who have Walk This Road um give us the you know I don't want to make the same mistakes that you guys have made or you know that old old Boomer term I didn't I don't want to walk up the hill what's it Barefoot in the snow both ways kind of nonsense give us like a quicker way to get to to get to where you guys are well and you know that's the that's the exact point that we started out with David is that uh Griffin and I realized that they just like cyber security in many other fields nowadays I mean if I want to learn how to change my car tire I can just go to YouTube and there's a video on it but you know what I I destroyed my washing machine the other week because I watched the wrong YouTube video and the person helped me destroy my washing machine and so what we know is that some of the videos that teach osen skills online uh on that are free maybe aren't the the best Educators they aren't the the most ethical people or they just it isn't quality material so that's why we created our class we we wanted to do it the right way um glad you said that I just have to jump in you I went to to a doctor and he was saying you know you can get this you can go YouTube and you can watch this guy who does these videos and if you do that you're going to destroy your legs so it's like okay yeah go to go to the go to the people who actually know what they're doing and that's why it's great to have you guys on you know to share this sorry interrupted you yeah no no no that's the exact point is that it's really hard to know as a new person coming into a field whether it's washing machine repair or whether it's it's osens it's hard to know who are the people that are going to teach you the good stuff and teach you to be ethical and have a process and really get you in there who's just going to showbo and teach you how to do it wrong yeah and we realize too that you know at some point if people are serious about anything they're going to invest some some resource into it right time money and things like that and you know when it comes to your your question about how do I catch up to where you are well we obviously have invested a lot of time right over 20 years we've in invested time in our learning but along the way we've also invested money and the reason that we do that is because there are people who are far ahead who can curate that that that knowledge for us and can deliver it to us in a way that makes sense and help to ramp us up quickly and at the times and places where that's right for us then we did those things well that's that's one of the benefits of going with a cure with a course that somebody's created they've logically organized things I'm trying to teach myself how to play the bass guitar I know I just all of these random things we're talking about I'm trying to teach myself how to play bass guitar and I'm I'm looking online for videos and one person's like you got to know your scales and arpeggios and another person's like don't worry about it scales and arpeggios play your favorite song and everybody's got a voice and which one do I do I really focus on and the honest of God's truth is I probably am going to go take a lesson somewhere and get somebody else's thoughts so this is a start me page it's free and on the internet and this is uh Griffin you want to tell them what this is yes so um obviously I love open source intelligence and I have collected a library of links and websites and just volumous amounts of of information and along the way I started to organize it and I was using the start me page to kind of categorize the places that I like to go and learn so I have sections in here for things like news and blogs podcasts webcasts newsletters and what I would do is as I as I read things as I consumed that that learning that content from other people in the field I found folks that I liked and I found products that I liked and I started collecting them here uh along the way it became a popular resource for people in the open source intelligence field um and so I try to do a good job of keeping it curated and and bringing in new content and things like that so as you can see it's laid out in sections and those sections all have a heading that kind of tells you what's going on with it right in the middle you have news and blogs uh of course you have tools and resource collections right because the number one question we always get asked is you know what are the best ENT tools where do I find the best ENT tools and you guys are going to come back and give us your top 10 I hope we are we are we absolutely will we absolutely will and there's a lot of people as you can see from that section being the largest there's a lot of people who have collected tools and categorized those links and you know put them in ways for people to be able to search for you know I need a tool to discover a Discord server or something like that uh and so I collected their collections right so that when I need a resource I can go look for for a resource in their collections but really I think where the most value is in a page like this is you can see the curated content in the way that you might learn and so one thing that Micah and I have discovered over the years with teaching people is that not everyone learns content the same way right so somebody may be an audio audio type listener um that that consumes content in an audio fashion maybe they listen to podcasts somebody else might need to see videos and perhaps they spend time on YouTube uh another person may need to read a book right so I have categories for each of those types of learnings those styles of learnings and I try to Star my favorite resources within each section so if somebody's like hey look you've got 10 books on here and I want to take a look at one or two well I've put a star next to the ones that I like the most um yeah glad you did that because otherwise it's overwhelming right and it can be right and the whole point of this is to make ENT seem a little bit less overwhelming uh the community the ENT community at large is incredible I have I have met some amazing people I have learned so much from other people's work and what they share in the community but to Micah's earlier point you know you you don't know where the where the good quality is where the where the good people are and so I try to really focus on those people that I think are adding value maybe they've taught me something or I see them regularly producing valuable content and I try to bring that to light for other people who are sort of following in that path and that's the whole point of the start me page it's great to see this I mean it's um even that might be overwhelming so I'm great I'm glad once again that like highlighted the the the the the the um items or the you know the websites that you really like um but perhaps you can talk more about this because I mean this is great but I wouldn't even know where to start so uh one of the things that that Griffin and I know is that that when you're starting out you need that direct path you need do this do this do this right so so here's what our recipe is for how do you start out you pick whatever modality you learn best in like Griffin said um if you're a book person Ray Baker's book or Michael bazel's books those are like the Bibles within the oan field and if you like books go ahead and buy them peruse them go through them um they're written very well and they're they're excellent resources if you're somebody that likes podcast and stories we've got some of those over here as well you know just start with the ones that are starred um pick your modality for us one of the things that's very important is keeping up to date on resources but for you just getting into the field that's not something that you have to do until you know how to do stuff right you staying up to date on the latest AI ENT Venture and the tools that use all of these cool things is not going to help you in the long run unless you understand the fundamentals and the fundamentals aren't really flashy so they're sometimes not not not great and not fun to learn but in this case um we have a whole bunch of training sections here including the myosin training and other courses in here and some of these are paid and some of these are free and in fact one of the biggest things you can learn to learn ENT better is how to self research things go to Google go to Bing go to Yandex go to some search engine and type in whatever it is that you want to learn and then follow those resources collect them yourselves and as you're tracking that as you're doing that make your own list of where you've been what you thought of those things and that's going to be a great learning path I see you got sanss there I mean for a lot of people watching Sans is like out of budget right but mik you trained you trained or created courses at Sans right that's right I created the first osens course uh at Sans SEC 487 um but last year I stopped actually two years ago two years ago I stopped uh teaching for Sans um just for a variety of reasons I wanted to do more with myos training and and grow my own training company also I wanted to make training that was affordable or more affordable to more people yeah and I love that because you guys have got the free training but then you've also got your package perhaps you can just show us your website because there's um you've got different options right where you can like buy an individual course or you can buy like the whole Year's training or something if we come over if we go to my ent. trining and we go to and uh we go to the bundles and tracks page we have essentially two bundles uh the bundle of core courses that are the courses that Griffin and I have created that give you that standard foundation of what you need in the world of ENT that's the immersion bundle right here um and this has 12 courses right now that take you takes you top to bottom of how do you get that solid foundation but many of you are probably going to want more right that how do I get everything because while we have 12 courses in here we have 37 courses over in the all course bundle um and that all oen course bundle has the dark web has social media platforms and has some of the more technical things that that many of the people coming from a cyber background may be interested in like python Pro python tools that do ENT but then if you like any of the if you try if you want to do any of these courses uh and just do a single course because maybe you are looking to get into telegram so we go down to the social media track and we go to telegram you can pay this um you can pay $100 and um is that is that $100 a month or a year it's $100 a year David just because of your listeners and that's great I mean so the um the for people watching there different people who you know some people are starting out don't have money students or perhaps in parts of the world where they where they don't have money and then you've got people like me who perhaps been or like you have been doing it for a long time we just have a company that can pay or you know we we we far further in our journey so we can buy those different options so you've got the free course on your website you've got different options on your website but the the one that'll always come up is YouTube are there any recommended YouTube channels watch your YouTube channel perhaps you can just show us that um you've shown us sort of the list of people that you interviewed but um your you that's your YouTube channel and then any other YouTube channels that you can recommend yeah so so this is our YouTube channel right now the only content that we're really putting there are those careers and ENT videos um that's that's our main YouTube content now but Griffin I think you know some other uh YouTube channels that are quite popular yep um on the start me page I have a couple of them that are starred um in the uh in the video section there there you go uh Gary Rell uh is doing YouTube videos now and um I would say that he's fairly recently making content I just really like the way that he puts things together um they're well produced but they're not overproduced and they are often very succinct which I know people appreciate and so you can you know if you like consuming um knowledge by way of video then I think that Gary stuff is is a really great place to look um we have another one that we um start on there the growl Hicks uh Sophia Santos's YouTube channel Sophia focuses on walkthroughs and exercises which we really like because as practitioners ourselves we like to really demonstrate Concepts because it makes the learning just kind of more immersive and um you know helps people kind of connect with uh with how to perform the skills as opposed to just telling them what they are and she does a great job of walking through some different OS and challenges and showing the steps that she's taken in there I'm glad you've done that because the Channel's aren't that big but it's great that this content you don't even know about the people out there that are producing all this amazing content no I was going to say that that um well to your point absolutely you know the the ENT field as far as YouTube is quite varied there's a lot of little channels on there that are doing some really good work but um but it's uh it's a challenge to really make sure that they're they really get the the their due this is benj Benjamin strick Ben has uh some really great videos here again all free on YouTube um got 22 of these uh YouTube uh ENT at home and he he Ben does some amazing work uh examining videos of warart Tor places in the world looking at before and after satellite images and really teaching you how to do all of that uh he's an expert in geolocation in image analysis and video analysis and he makes it so approachable I love his uh just sitting down and watching his videos they're very entertaining as as well yep all three of those are the start options there under the webcast and videos so if people want a place to start that's definitely a great place I also really want to spend some time calling out the ENT community and how to sort of get in there as Micah and I were talking about you know the advice that we give to people when they come to us and ask how do I get into osen one thing that always comes up is that sense of kind of community that belonging to the group right and it's such a humongous community that it can be intimidating and you don't really know where people are or how to kind of kind of Step into the room and meet people right um so I've gathered up some um some discords and slacks and some LinkedIn groups depending on maybe where you go with your own social networking uh where you can network with other people in an ENT focused community and that's really where um you know folks like Micah and I have gotten together and so many other people that have gone on to create content and you know training companies and do presentations and things like that it's we've networked and met each other and found people that we really connect with uh and that sense of belonging that sense of community is one of the things that keeps people um really in ENT as a passion you know it's it's fun to solve the puzzles it's fun to find that little piece of information online and and get the answer that nobody else could get but it's also really cool to feel like you're a part of something that um that a lot of other people are connected to and that and that matters to somebody like me so I like to show how other people can sort of come in um and be welcomed into the community as well see on the top left you've got like the um those are the discords and groups that you would recommend people join once again the St yep so the thing that I would say is that each one of these groups these discords or slacks or private forums has their own feel right just like you would just like um at lunchtime at work or in in school every PE everybody found their own people that they meshed with um here same thing uh some of these groups are more focused on finding war crimes in certain parts of the world and some of them are more focused on uh just learning and sharing and some of them more focused on doing exercises so depending upon what you're looking for and how you want to interact with this go to a bunch of these and try them out just see what it's like to lurk in there and and see what kind of people are there trust me it took me like four or five different places before I found one that I was comfortable with and then like Griffin said it it helped me amplify my career I love that I mean you got to networking is so important and I mean for jobs as well right if you give back to the community it's going to open up doors for you as well absolutely and many of those um those groups those Community places will have things like job postings or um different career Focus sections that you can go into because you know like we've mentioned a few times so many different careers utilize end and if you're a person who wants to get into osen right like we're asked all the time really it's a matter of how do you want to use it and what's going to be applied to because you may have a profession a career that you already are are really passionate about that you see yourself doing for a long time and it's more of how do I incorporate better osen skills into the work that I'm doing and that's where you kind of find your group of people and you find your Niche and and those Community groups are really great for that that that's brilliant but I think for a lot of people a a lot of people in cyber perhaps or in other you know disciplines you learn by doing do you guys have is there ctfs or you capture the flag or the ways to practically learn this stuff glad you asked that David yeah absolutely very much like the world of cyber security and uh just other things that are out there online challenges are are very abundant at the free and the paid levels as well Griffin has a bunch of them here in the challenges section uh at the very bottom of his page um each of these goes to people like uh Grail Hicks who we just saw her YouTube channel and these exercises are really important important um because I mentioned you know I'm trying to teach myself bass I watched a whole bunch of YouTube videos David you would have been very proud of me and I went and picked up my Bas and I have no idea what I was doing on so watching videos does not make you an expert in something I know that's that's hard to for some people to understand but it's it's it's doing and so these challenges they range from classic capture the flags where you sign up for an account on some system like try hack me or other ones and you answer questions or go find an find uh results out there using open source intelligence or some really more complicated ones like sector 035 quizzes that you start out by sending an email to an a Gmail account and then it it kind of leads you through a process just some of these other ones which are are paid and you know will help you solidify your skills through doing I love that I mean it's it's exactly that you can watch a thousand videos about how to write a bicycle but until you've fallen off a few times and tried you're not going to be able to ride a bicycle and there's no shame in failing right I mean it's just you got to get up and try again yeah and actually the the failing is what helps us learn um I uh I had a well when my son was little we went to a little basketball team for him and and he was like six or seven and couldn't even really dribble and then we looked around and there were kids that were dribbling and almost I mean these six-year-olds were like dunk and stuff the these kidss were dribbling around they had they had valid skills okay they had some some great skills and the coach said okay whether you have skills or whether this is your first time with a basketball I want you to come here to fail this is a safe space this is a place where you learn skills so you can become even greater and so these places these challenges are safe places to fail so that when you do get that ENT work and you're tracking down somebody that's uh trafficking human beings or a oligarch that is doing bad things you don't fail there or if you do fail you know how to work through it I'm glad you mentioned that because you can go in the dark web or wherever and you can get into a lot of trouble really quickly I'm assuming absolutely well the reality is real ENT work is not very flashy not very glamorous right you if you read a blog or you watch a case study video or something like that it looks very exciting and you see all the Flash and the fun stuff that people found but what you don't see is all of the failure and all of the times that you clicked here and there was nothing or you typed that query and there was nothing or you got the wrong result or the wrong person or you had to sift through a bunch of data and organize it in a way that you could contextualize what you were dealing with that's not the fun part of it right um but that's the reality of it and if you're taking training you should expect to feel uncomfortable you should expect to run up against things that you don't know how to do and have somebody show it to you and then go out there and try it and maybe not do it all the way and have to go back and watch it again you know and take your time and if you're not if you're not taking on training from that point of view where failure is okay if you're in an environment that makes you feel like failure is something that's uh looked at and objectified by the people around you and makes you uncomfortable then you're in the wrong place and there are lots of places where you can go and find better better experience better training better quality and you know that's that's what Micah and I try and put first in the products that we make is the experience of the user is really the most important thing we want them to get the knowledge and we want them to get it in the best way for them it all started at zero and I think people sometimes forget that you know it's easy to say oh this is dumb this is too easy but you know when you were young you didn't know that either and I think that that's something I always try and strive for because a lot of people who watch this content will be new to this or whichever field it is new to oen new to cyber new to networking whatever it is you've always got to remember that you know compete against yourself don't compete against other people you know some people are very competitive and that's good if it's done in a constructive way but I mean at the end of the day you you're fighting with yourself right to try and make yourself better every day well and and that's one of the things that was very discouraging to me in the cybercity world uh I did a talk about having these impostor feelings impostor syndrome because I was comparing myself to the the Uber Elite people that have been doing this all their lives I was feeling incredibly inadequate so like Griffin said you know people need to find a place where they are comfortable track their own Journey hey last week I didn't know about this this week I know about this and and it allows you to really see your individual progress don't measure yourself up against other people because it's just going to be discouraging one of the you guys have mentioned this word a few times uh tracking organization keeping track of data whatever and I saw you got a course in obsidian is it you know how do you what's your F do you have like how do you keep track of all this stuff because I'm assuming you you're collecting I don't know huge amounts of data so obsidian is one of the things that I really love um and in fact uh David I looked at the clip from last year and uh you you pinned me down on my favorite tool and it was obsidian and because it's just an amazing place to store a huge amount of stuff saying that though I will tell you that in the past year while obsidian is my main note taking uh course U note taking application I'm also a big fan of simpler tools like Excel um Griffin was mentioning you know that sometimes you just have a whole bunch of data and there is very few there are very few other tools that can take a whole bunch of data sort it um organize it filter it like Excel or the other types of spreadsheets can so that's another tool that we use Griffin what do you what do you like using well for organization I'm sort of beholden to Micah's obsidian um because we have to work together on it but I I I mean for me I come from a from a simpler time right so I'm taking notes and note taking applications I'm writing out word and I'm probably creating more work for myself there but that's just a demonstration of how the Spectrum can be of what you can do and be effective right and it's what works for you it's not what works for everybody or what you should be doing and we want people to understand that open source intelligence is intelligence work which requires that human element of processing that that analytical look at the data right it's not Gathering up information that's just information it's applying that human piece to it and you can't you can't recreate the human piece with tooling tooling can make you more efficient it can give you access to data that you couldn't otherwise get and it can do a lot of powerful things but it can't replicate what you can do with your mind and the people that are in there that are curious that are flipping over those that H 100th Rock when everybody else stopped at 99 those are the people that become great open source intelligence analysts because they have that drive and that Curiosity to be able to find that one piece that everybody else did I'm glad you mentioned that because I mean the I got on my list here like prerequisite skills in some disciplines like if you want to be like some hacker that hacks or reverse engineers malware or whatever that's quite a quite a journey to get to that skill level um is it easier here or is it like do I need what prere prerequisite skills do I need to you know get started I I really think that you have to have a ton of self-motivation and perseverance because like I said before this work is a lot of failure it's a lot of looking in the wrong place before you find the right place you know you have to know how to you have to know where to look and you have to know what you can do with a piece of data if I had your email David I could go off and I could find so much information about you because I know where to look but in a lot of places that I look I'm not going to find anything and you have to be ready to be able to push through that and to keep looking and to keep knowing and you have to be able to follow a process because the the intelligence cycle itself is cyclical and as I as I as I run your email address through different tools and I find new things about you then I'm going back with your usernames and I'm going back with other pieces of data about you and I'm reanalyzing and researching those things and it's a process that I've learned over time that's now ingrained in me but you can go out as a person who's you know newly introduced to osen and you can learn that cycle and then you just have to practice doing it until it becomes second nature sort of like riding a bike like you mentioned I think the the prerequisite skills for open source intelligence also depend upon what part of ENT you're going into right I mean if you're looking at at the at war crimes type of uh videos and images um you're going to need some other you know Baseline skills for how to deal with vicarious trauma and and how to process those images and the how to process that data so that you stay healthy um whereas if you're just doing Simple social media analysis for uh organizations or to to find uh information about people um some of the I'll say it some of the younger people that have grown up on social media platforms with all the apps they are native researchers right um I talked to my kids or other kids about these types of things like how do you do this and they're like oh there's seven ways you could do that and oh and that what you see there that's a filter and this means that they they speak the language and they know how to do it naturally so just because somebody is starting out doesn't mean that they're already not coming to the world of ENT with skills that are really useful so that that good timing because that's my next question age because a lot of people say I'm too young or or ask the question am I too young and then the the flip side is am I too old and the one I always get is David I'm 21 years old is it too late for me to get into cyber or I'm 27 is it too late for me to learn XYZ skill um so how do you address age I I'll tell you what um I in the last 20 years I have I have hired and developed more people than I can remember and just in recent years I I met a young man who was working as a like an IT Help Desk person at a college um did didn't have any open source intelligence skills but had a ton of passion and drive and knew that he really wanted to do this work and uh I took him on um in sort of a mentorship uh type of role and I worked with him in open source intelligence through some volunteer work that he did to support um our efforts at the national Child Protection task force and then about a year and a half later I helped him apply for and get his first uh Intel analyst role and he thrived in that role and the company did great things for him and people continued to help him because he had that drivve and passion that people could see and then he went on to a very well-known social media company and heads up an important division for them now doing um very important investigative work to support law enforcement in a role that three to five years ago he probably didn't even know existed and it was because of what he had inside of him not what any of the rest of us did we just sort of guided him on a path and there are lots of us out there that are ready to guide you all on the path you just have to know where to look and you have to be willing to put in the time and and I think that one of the one of the really important things to think about with ENT is something that Griffin mentioned earlier that that it is human focused a lot of it is human focused or a lot of it is cyber focused you know you're dealing with domains and IPS and attribute uh attribution of cyber attacks and IP reputations or you're researching websites for in my opinion it it's really a very welcoming field because if you are somebody that's transitioning from an unfulfilling job in something or somebody that was great with languages but really didn't know what to do if you can translate this language in that language or know how to operate in dark web forums or know how to re do something in the Cyber realm those skills which are not directly ENT are going to make you more powerful in the field a language person is going to be probably more helpful when dealing with uh possibly foreign social media like what are they saying is this propaganda or maybe going into certain dark web forums where people like me who only really read English uh I can't go into a forum that is in Russian or in Arabic because I won't know what to do um so there there are un seemingly unrelated skills that with a proper Mentor can help you realize that maybe this is an area of ENT that you're already primed for and I mean is it too late if I'm in my 30s or 40s or 50s it is absolutely never too late absolutely not I mean the the the field is so buried and there's so much opportunity there that if you genuinely have a passion for it or for anything let's just go beyond osen right it doesn't matter how old you are it matters that that's what you want to do spend your time doing things that you love I consider myself to be one of the luckiest people in the world because I wake up every day excited for the work that I'm doing and the chance to get to do it with with some awesome people and some days I don't even know how I got here harness that feeling harness that passion and follow the things that you want to do don't listen to everybody else and don't listen to the naysayers and the people that'll make you feel like you're not good enough today you know what you're going to be better tomorrow than you were today and you're G to be better the next day and the next day and then someday it won't matter so just put your head down and go work Griffin I I'm not sure if we should talk about this or David I'm not sure if we should talk about this but there's um there's a downside to wanting to get in the field of ENT is that you get really excited you follow your passion you're learning stuff maybe you've taken a class or done self-learning you're doing the exercises and everything and now you can't find a job if that's my next question how do I get experience without a job how do I get the experience to get a job so yeah perhaps you can talk about that because that's that's the big one right it's it's fun to do this on the side but for a lot of people it's I I need to put food on the table so perhaps you can talk about are they good like you know are there good jobs it sounds like there lots of good jobs and I'm sorry to interrupt you m but like how do I go from like interest and art to getting that job yeah so um there are a lot of jobs that use ENT um so you may already know the type of job that you're looking for that's going to use ENT and then you have to determine do I need some kind of a certification do I need a specific skill set and then how do I develop that and that's where those learning resources that we shared can come in handy because you can focus your time on particular courseware you can focus your learning in a particular area um if you don't know yet what kind of career you want but you know that open source intelligence speak speaks to you and that you want to be a part of it well then that's where you need to go out and you need to find that mentorship you need to find that training that um that connects you to the resources and things that you need to do to upskill yourself and there is tons of opportunity to get involved in the community Through volunteer work through helping um crowdsourced investigative um operations things like finding missing people and things like that there's a great organizations that are out there um putting on events to do things like that you can go out and practice those skills and Vel them um but along the way you can learn you can blog you can make your own videos you can write you can get involved in collectives of other people that are producing content you can find universities that are involved in open source intelligence and find programs there you can offer to volunteer your services to people that are doing good work in a field that you feel connected to using the skills that you do have there's lots of ways to get involved and develop those skills that you can put onto a resume and ultimately the best thing about osen is that it teaches you how to get better at finding things online right that's that's where we are so when I'm looking for what jobs are there in the ENT field you kind of get BET right you know how to find those things right because you're you're going to maybe use the word ent ent in the the area ENT in the topic ENT in languages or open source intelligence and you'll start using those Google search enging queries or Bing or other search engines to do the research to find your job there are not a lot of jobs out there right now that say ENT and this they will have synonyms they will have other processes like must be good at reverse uh image searching or or analyzing images in video or other things so when you're doing your job search and you're doing your queries make sure that you create a keyword list of all of the not just the titles like ENT investigator or intelligence investigator make sure that you note all of those skills that you have or you will have when you get to the workplace that you could search for those individual skills or certifications to see if there are jobs out there that are being posted that have those as requirements uh there is a site out there called ENT jobs um that specifically focuses on curating jobs that would leverage ENT skills and so um people can check out the link to that uh it's a great place to go and look but because osen is sort of a subset of other types of work that you might be doing or it's a it's a skill that's involved in work that you're doing then really it's about connecting with the career and figuring out what aspects of ENT you need to grow in in order to be able to do that type of work effectively I mean it's great advice I mean I I think we spoke offline in networking it's if if someone wanted to become a network engineer um you can go and start like with a CCNA and then ccmp CCI is like your it's kind of like mapped out for a lot of people it's changed a bit recently but that's kind of like a a path in cyber security you know um Mike if you if someone's going to an ocp you know this guy knows like Baseline knowledge you know he's at a certain level or she's at a certain level so is there anything like that in oent or you know the thing is like let me put it to you this way if you're going to hire me what would you look for is it CS or the specific Sears or you're going to look for like have I volunteered and you know I can prove this by showing stuff on a Blog you know what would you look in look for in someone and you know like flip it around if I was if I was applying for a job how would I prove that I actually you know I've got some experience or you know do I need spe the specific search stuff like that so I I'll go ahead and take a stab at this and then Griffin I know you have some other opinions um for me I I came from the world of cyber and CTS were were a very big thing but but it was that choosing your path and then getting those searchs that would allow you to do that type of work right ENT isn't like that yet uh there are some certifications that are out there but those shirts are are for products or for specific training courses and they're not not industry recognized necessarily yeah um and some of the CTS that are out there that are in ENT that are industry recognized are extremely expensive to obtain out of the yeah out out of the realm of most people so then if you if you can't get those those search then you look at how do you make sure that people know you have the skills yeah and for me coming up in cyber my whole thing was prove it prove it prove it right I I created a Blog I did some personal research I noted when I did capture the flags I I I created that online Persona the problem David is that a lot of people in ENT are also very big proponents of privacy because they know that that they what people designed right so they don't want to have that big online Persona they don't want to have social media in their personal names at all because they don't want people to be able to look them up so it's a really big quandry the biggest suggestion I have for these people is get to know other people because if I'm in a community like what Griffin was talking about earlier and if I'm in a community and I know that you do amazing work or you have great ideas or you you're suggesting and you're supportive or whatever then when you say hey I'm looking for a job we've got that personal connection yep there are lots of ways to demonstrate that you have skills or that you've developed skills in intelligence work um you can you can promote it online through things like blogs you can volunteer with organizations but I love that Micah called out the community the networking that happens in the o Community is really probably the Catalyst for more jobs and more career changes than anything else um because it's about who you know and in a lot of those communities they're collaborating on investigative work or they're attempting to help on some cause or they're or they're offering opportunities for people to participate in challenges and do things that they can then um that they can talk about in a resume or um you know in a personal website or or whatever fits them but having those connections with people who are in the industry already that recognize your your passion and skills that's really what it's all about for me the way to do that is to for instance connect to you guys on LinkedIn but like the big thing is to like go into those like discords and places right yeah one of the things that Griffin and I have talked about many times offline is that when people connect to us on LinkedIn or Twitter uh we' love to to to make those connections and and hear their stories or or do whatever but but that is a one-on-one kind of behind closed door direct message type of thing and it doesn't represent the divers of thought the the uh well you know I went into one of these these discords one time and I asked a question when I was early in my osen career and I was very focused on Cyber and osens and I was very focused on US based o and there were people on there from other countries they just blew my mind with the creativity of responses but also the resources that they had access to that I had no idea about so yeah connect with Griffin connect with myself uh but go go in and actually start learning from peers that are around the world because you you'll be a a better enter in the end do do that networking do that professional networking in places like LinkedIn um or other places where you've got Professionals in the field that you want to connect with and and go meet people introduce yourself make those connections have a few conversations with people and get to be somebody that folks know and that can make a difference so I'm going to put you guys on the spot now right um 2024 I want to get into this what are the top three or five things I can do like first thing I go and do is go and register on a Discord and I'm assuming it's the one on the top left there right that's the first one I should go and look at yeah the Belling cat Discord is is a great one the one next to it as well the case Discord server used to be the osen Curious project Discord server is probably the biggest um and there there are tons of resources and tons of people in those places I would say that if I had to pick three places to go in the networking World um for open open source intelligence it's probably that that case Discord it's going to be a LinkedIn profile and it's going to be Twitter now while Twitter has changed and some people have moved over to um you know Mastadon and other places there's still a very very large ENT community on Twitter and you can find a lot of people to follow and there's still a lot of content coming that way so follow you guys and then see who you follow and then follow those people is that right or have you got a A list of people I should follow yeah so I I don't have a list of people um that you should follow you could definitely take a look at our our accounts and see who we follow for me it's more about who's putting out the content that speaks to me that connects to what I what I need and what I want um and so I would encourage people to go and try out all those places and and for me I it's there's a big overlap uh Twitter uh hash ENT was was an incredible resource for for many years to get the latest tool the latest techniques um and know stuff it has become more fragmented recently and with people leaving the platform and Bots coming in and and just uh making it you unsure whether this is a good link or not such good link um but I would say um pick a Discord that fits your style learning uh Belling cat case U there are many that are are for certain languages um that are for just French or or other languages so if you are a non-native English speaker there may be some great communities and then for me one of the biggest places I am at is Reddit uh Reddit SLR oent um I love seeing the the questions that come in there and stuff okay so join the community you guys are giving us a great or list of great communities Twitter um LinkedIn or um Discord Etc so that's the first thing I'm going to do second thing I'm going to do is going to take your training right or that should be the first on the list you've got that free training on your website so I would do that um anything else like any other I mean training or YouTube channels like just give me the top three things like join this community go and take some free training so that I can like get an appetizer and if if I really want to if I'm really serious I can buy training anything else I was going to say I was going to say um start to exercise those skills um and see where your learning gaps are so go out and and check out some of those challenges in ctfs or watch how people like um Sophia grow hick has conducted her research and put up those video explainers of of how to solve challenges and see identify your own learning Gap so that you can focus your time and effort on training in those areas so if I had to break down what what somebody in OS what somebody that is looking to get an OS should do um it would be one get that training take our introduction our free introduction to ENT course that'll give you a foundation then look for your next training whether it's on our site in our paid courses or whether it's free resources that are out there second thing is get that community that Community is going to help you eventually get the job but it's also going to provide you that diversity of thought and going to help Mentor you along the way and then the next thing is for you to find places to practice now practicing ENT is absolutely the easiest thing you will ever come across on the web when I was in cyber I had to create this virtual machine with Advanced networking and all and then hack it and then rebuild it and with ENT you literally are going out to Google you pick a Target whether it's yourself which is always a good Target to start out with because you know what's good and what's bad what's false information and what's real so Google yourself uh look at what your usernames are your email addresses see what you can find and then you said this earlier David pivot pivot pivot right so I searched for my email in a search engine I found these sites let me go and research that is that me is that somebody else so those are my top three things that somebody can do to really get a great start in the new year so mik you mentioned this earlier and a lot of people watch his video or watch my channel are also interested in privacy um it's like the the more I listen to you you guys and people like you the the more paranoid I kind of become like I don't want to put anything out online when I see what you guys can do like the fact that you can you know find out where someone is just by their drinking or like just posting some random photo on the Internet it's insane what you guys can do so you know what's your advice with privacy and like also like if you're doing this how do you do you guys have a course or something that like how do I keep myself safe excellent question and that is if we were to say what is the opp opposite of Open Source intelligence what is the opposite of of what we do going out and finding things it would be privacy right is it's it's removing stuff from the Internet or limiting stuff to get on the internet as as you increase your privacy you decrease our ability to find stuff about you and this is something that we have covered in our course operational security and privacy um that we sell and we sell because it we feel like it's it's an important piece of the overall puzzle keeping you as the in investigator as the analyst safe in your journey to research whatever it is that you're going to research so this course has all of our tips and tricks uh about vpns about tour about uh how do you remove your data online and how do you even do an assessment of of what your personal risk-based tolerance is so I'm glad you mentioned tour vpn's favorite VPN if any or is tour better than a VPN or is it like does it depend I'm I'm a proton user um I like protons products I like like their I like their quality their services I like their options and I really like their price point I am happy to and I recommend that people pay for a good quality VPN um that's one place where I where I don't like to recommend free options in the world uh I do think that that when you're hiding your your traffic that way or protecting your traffic and IP address that way that paying for a quality VPN provider is a good idea and I feel like um for me anyway protonvpn checks that box and email same thing proton email or was it like do you have a separate email I do use the proton uh email um ecosystem and I have it set up through my domain um and I have other addresses through them as well I like the flexibility in that regard with their product and the ability to to run other email through it um they've also expanded their services now to include a password manager they've got a drive service um they have a calendar service and everything is end to end encrypted um um zero visibility so I really like that but you're not paid to say that but I will is that right Griffin you're not paid to say that right not at all I wish they would pay me but I will say this for you know for transparency I am sponsored by proton so they they do pay for ads on my channel and I'm going to be interviewing by the time you've watched this hopefully I'll be interviewing a very interesting person from proton so I'll link that video below if it's out um but just for transparency I do get the I do use proton as well and the reason I use them is because people like you always recommend prodin and you know when I talk to hackers or people in different spheres in cyber secur or o it seems to come up over and over again and that's the reason why I also recommend them and sorry mik what about you uh so I'm a proton uh so many of us use multiple uh multiple vpns just because some of the endpoints are are already burned um on some of the more popular ones so I also use mulad um I like the anonymity that they have the speed's great and it gives me a just what I need to get where I need to go but you also mentioned tour one of the things that we find is unless you're going into the dark into the tour dark web to to do things to research the the hidden uh services that are in there to look at marketplaces or forums or whatever in tour the general thing that I will say is don't use it as a VPN because um it's not as safe and as secure and introduces a huge amount of latency into your work and the sites on the public internet that you're going to be browsing to they know that you're coming from a tour exit node and will flag your your your data or even require you to solve extra captas or maybe even just block you in just uh holy you said something very interesting did I hear right where you said tour is not as safe as a VPN it it is not it is different you know if you go into tour and you are looking up hidden services and everything is is on an encrypt I mean it's encrypted multiple times it's that that onion encapsulated encryption that's safe going out to the internet through essentially doing a guard node middle relay node and then out through an exit node that exit node is absolutely the Lynch pin the the weakest spot in the whole chain if that's owned by and run by somebody nefarious they might be logging what you're doing they might be changing your traffic they might be man in the middling your SSL TLS connections so that they're decrypting your https traffic there's a lot of stuff and there are if you if you do your ENT research uh you can find that there actually studies that have been shown that a lot of these exit nodes are are destroy your anonymity when you go to the surface web staying inside of tour not a problem but going to the internet that exit Noe is a very very weak Ling we that's the whole conversation I think I'm going to have to get you back for that because I'm sure there's going to be a lot of comments about what you just said there so the recommendation would be use a a reputable VPN and you guys have given us two uh to is great if you want to go darkware but don't use a VPN if you're going to the clear web so Mike and Griffin it's been like over an hour really appreciate you guys sharing your time and your knowledge with us where can people go to find you I'll put your social media links below but the best place is your is your website right that's right my ent. trining is our commercial site and then Griffin and I are both on LinkedIn and Twitter yeah we're happy to connect with people in the community we we're here because we love doing open source intelligence and we love meeting people that also love to do it so please reach out to us connect with us uh if we can help you and we have resources to do so then we will um or we'll direct you to places um that might help you you know we at the end of the day we're happy if you learn something from us but we're even more happy if you just learn something in general about osen and it can be from anyone and we know lots of great people that can teach you that's brilliant thanks so much

Channel: David Bombal

Views: 74,336

Keywords: osint, geolocation, geolocation game, geolocation tracking, social media, cyber, hacking, osint tools, osintgram, osint framework, osint ukraine, osint tutorial, osint course, osint framework tutorial, osint investigation, osint tv, osint curious, osintgram kali linux, osint instagram, cyber security, information security, open-source intelligence, open source intelligence, cybersecurity training, kali linux, what is osint, ethical hacking, hacker, google dorks, dork, dorks

Id: izR7BMVJEh0

Length: 63min 19sec (3799 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 19 2024